Tag: avant garde music

Friday night at Issue Project Room, Josh Sinton sat with his back to the audience in the middle of the stage, breathing into his contrabass clarinet. It’s a secondary instrument for him: his usual axe is the baritone sax, which he plays with some of New York’s most interesting big bands, notably Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society and Amir ElSaffar‘s Rivers of Sound.

The sound of the horn rumbled through a pedalboard and then a bass amp. In his black suit and matching fedora, he made a somber presence. It was clear from his silhouette, larger than life on the northern wall above the marble arch to the side of the stage, that he was breathing pretty hard. It takes a lot of air to fill those tubes. Sinton did that via circular breathing, in an almost nonstop, practically forty-minute improvisation. Is there an Olympic swimmer who can match that for endurance?

Likewise, the music conjured vast, oceanic vistas – when it wasn’t evoking an old diesel tractor. Several other machines came to mind: an encroaching lawnmower; a bandsaw; the hypnotically comforting thrum from the engine room of an ocean liner, through a heavy bulkhead. Overtones echoed, and pulsed, and sometimes hissed or howled, Sinton pulling back on the volume when that happened until the final ten minutes or so.

There was a point about halfway through when it felt utterly shameful to sit back, eyes closed, and get lost in the rumbling ambience, considering how hard Sinton was working to create such a calming effect. Finally, he opted not to pull away from the rising wall of feedback, letting it shriek as the throb of the amp became more like a jackhammer. Suddenly, what had been incredibly soothing was absolutely assaultive: a couple of people exited the front row. Finally, slowly and methodically, Sinton brought the atmosphere full circle to a barely audible wisp. And then silence.

Sinton calls this project Krasa – it’s a deliberate attempt to push himself out of his comfort zone to spur new creative tangents. Another completely different gig which Sinton has excelled at lately has been as the leader of Phantasos, a Morphine cover band. He had a residency with that trio last month at Barbes, putting a somewhat more slinky edge on Mark Sandman’s noir bounces and dirges. He had Dana Colley’s alternately gruff and plaintive sound down cold, and a rotating cast of bassists and drummers – notably Sam Ospovat- rose to the challenge of doing justice to such an iconic band. Much as Issue Project Room was close to sold out for Krasa, Phantasos could be a money gig to be proud of if Sinton could find the time.

Daily updates – if you go out a lot, you might want to bookmark this page and check back regularly. If you’re leaving your hood, make sure you check http://www.mta.info for service changes considering how the trains are at night and on the weekend.

If you don’t recognize a venue where a particular act is playing, check the comprehensive, recently updated list of over 200 New York City music venues at New York Music Daily’s sister blog Lucid Culture.

This is not a list of every show in town – it’s a carefully handpicked selection. If this calendar seems short on praise for bands and artists, it’s because every act here is recommended if you like their particular kind of music. Many different styles to choose from.

Showtimes listed here are set times, not the time doors open – if a listing says something like “9ish,” that means it’ll probably start later than advertised. If you see a show listed without the start time, that’s because either the artist, their publicist or the venue in question sent incomplete info – those acts are usually listed last on a particular date. Always best to check with the venue for the latest information on set times and door charges, since that information is often published here weeks in advance. Weekly events first followed by the daily calendar.

If you see a typo or an extra comma or something like that, remember that while you were out seeing that great free concert that you found out about here, somebody was up late after a long day of work editing and adding listings to this calendar ;)

On select Wednesdays and Sundays, an intimate, growing piano music salon on the Upper West Side featuring iconoclastically insightful, lyrical pianist Nancy Garniez – a cult favorite with an extraordinarily fluid, singing, legato style – exploring the delicious minutiae of works from across the centuries, beverages and lively conversation included! email for details/address

Mondays at 7 PM multi-instrumentalist Dennis Lichtman’s popular western swing band Brain Cloud at Barbes followed at 9:30 PM by a variety of south-of-the-border-style bands playing cumbias, boogaloo, salsa, maybe all of the above.

Mondays at the Jazz Standard it’s all Mingus, whether with the Mingus Orchestra, Big Band or Mingus Dynasty: as jazz goes, it’s arguably the most exhilarating show of the week, every week. The first-rate players always rise to the level of the material. Sets 7:30/9:30 PM, $25 and worth it.

Also Monday and Tuesday nights Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks, a boisterous horn-driven 11-piece 1920s/early 30’s band play Iguana, 240 W. 54th St ( Broadway/8th Ave) , 3 sets from 8 to 11, surprisingly cheap $15 cover plus $15 minimum considering what you’re getting. Even before the Flying Neutrinos or the Moonlighters, multi-instrumentalist Giordano was pioneering the oldtimey sound in New York; his long-running residency at the old Cajun on lower 8th Ave. is legendary. He also gets a ton of film work (Giordano wrote the satirical number that Willie Nelson famously sang in Wag the Dog).

Mondays in March Rev. Vince Anderson and his band play Union Pool in Williamsburg, two sets starting at 10:30 PM. The Rev. is one of the great keyboardists around, equally thrilling on organ or electric piano, an expert at Billy Preston style funk, honkytonk, gospel and blues. He writes very funny, very politically astute, sexy original songs and is one of the most charismatic, intense live performers of our time. It’s a crazy dance party. Paula Henderson from Burnt Sugar is the lead soloist on baritone sax, with frequent special guests.

Tuesdays in March, clever, fiery, eclectic ten-piece Balkan/hip-hop/funk brass maniacs Slavic Soul Party at 9 PM at Barbes (check the club calendar). Get there as soon as you can as they’re very popular. $10 cover.

Thursdays at 8:30 in March, the Brooklyn Raga Massive – a rotating cast of A-list Indian, jazz and rock musicians who love to jam out classic Indian themes from over the centuries to the present day – play the Jalopy, $15 adv tix at the bar at the main space. Tons of special guests followed by a wild raga jam!

Fridays and Saturdays at 5 PM adventurous indie classical string quartet Ethel plus frequent special guests playing a mix of classical and more contemporary material at the balcony bar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, free w/museum adm

Fridays in March, charmingly inscrutable Parisienne jazz chanteuse Chloe & the French Heart Jazz Band at Club Bonafide, $20. Schedule is 3/1 at 6, 3/8 at 9:30, 3/15 at 8, 3/22 at 5:30 and 3/29 at 6. She’ll also be there on 3/17 at 8, 3/24 and also 3/31 at 6 . Somebody give this woman a regular time slot, huh?

Fridays at 7:30 PM tenor saxophonist Ken Fowser leads his band at the Django. Jukebox jazz in a JD Allen vein but not as dark and more straight-ahead/groove-oriented: as postbop party music goes, nobody’s writing better than this guy right now.

Free classical concerts on Saturdays at 4 PM on March 23 and 30, returning to weekly Saturdays in April at Bargemusic; usually solo piano or small chamber ensembles. If you get lucky, you’ll catch pyrotechnic violinist/music director Mark Peskanov and/or the many members of his circle. Early arrival advised.

Saturdays in March, 6 PM Shelley Thomas – best known as a spectacular, haunting singer specializing in music from across the Middle East and the Balkans, but who is also an accomplished oudist – with a series of ensembles at Barbes

Most Sundays at 5:15 PM, a free recital on the amazing, powerful, dynamic new organ at St. Thomas Church at 5th Ave and 53rd St. featuring some of the world’s greatest organists. The space is magnificent and the music usually is too. Right now the church fathers are programming pretty much everybody who used to work here and play the mighty old Aeolian-Skinner organ that finally had to be replaced. Check the concert calendar for details.

3/1 Ty Segall at Warsaw is sold out – but in that space unless he really turns down you’re not going to hear anything anyway…

3/1, 7 PM sax quartet Nois make their New York debut with three world premieres by New York based composers Nathan Hudson, Howie Kenty and Ed Rosenberg III, plus Gemma Peacocke’s ‘Dwalm’, ‘Thirteen Changes’ from Pauline Oliveros and Georg Friedrich Haas’ ‘Saxophonquartett’ at Arete Gallery, $15

3/2, 6 PM hauntingly torchy songwriter Daphne Lee Martin at the small room at the Rockwood. Next door at the big room jaunty female-fronted original retro rocksteady band the Big Takeover plays at 9 for $10

3/2, 6 PM atmospheric, cinematic drummer/composer Tim Kuhl and his group at Pete’s

3/3, 4 PM a live score and film screening of the silent classic East and West (1923), featuring klezmer jazz piano legend Pete Sokolow – composer of the original score for the 1991 remastered film – with the great Michael Winograd on clarinet to celebrate the 121st birthday of the film’s star, Molly Picon, at the Center for Jewish History, 15 W 16th St., $15 adv tix rec

3/3, 6 PM tuba duo Avant Garde Working Class with Joe Daley and Jesse Dulman followed at 7 by Karen Ng and Henry Fraser doing a clarinet/bass duo at Downtown Music Galley

3/3, 10 PM chanteuse/uke player Dahlia Dumont’s Blue Dahlia play edgy, smartly lyrically-fueled, jazz-infused tunes in English and French with classic chanson and Caribbean influences at Barbes. The following night, 3/4, 6 PM they’re at the small room at the Rockwood

3/4, 7:30 PM early music chorale Calmus and adventurous early music ensemble the Sebastians play works by Handel, Bach, Tavener, Schutz, Palestrina and Rheinberger at Music Mondays, Advent Church, northwest corner of 93rd and Broadway, free

3/5, 7 PM Venezuelan group El Tuyero Ilustrado – cuatro player Edward Ramírez and singer and percussionist, Rafa Pino – play their new take on traditionaljoropo tuyero sounds at the Americas Society, $20

3/5, 7 PM rising star trumpeter Adam O’Farrill “with his new nine-piece ensemble Bird Blown Out of Latitude, performing new music born from the disorientation of personal displacement.” trumpeter Aaron Burnett and the Big Machine follow with special guest, the pyrotechnic Peter Evans at National Sawdust, $25 adv tix rec

3/5-9, 8:30 PM postbop/improv jazz drum maven Ches Smith leads a series of ensembles at the Stone at the New School, $20. Many killer lineups: the best could be 3/8 with Kris Davis (piano), Marc Ribot (guitar), Leon Boykins, Devin Hoff (bass)

3/6, 7:30 PM avant-rock band Boio, the genre-obliterating Warp Trio, and Forward Music Project – Amanda Gookin’s multimedia project of solo cello works developed to empower women and girls – followed by Contemporaneous playing works by violet Barnum and Henry Threadgill – a homage to Butch Morris – at Roulette, $18 adv tix rec

3/6, 7:30 PM iconic art-rockers the Bang on a Can All-Stars play world premieres of indie classical/art-rock dance music by Nicole Lizée, Josué Collado Fregoso, Henry Threadgill, and Trevor Weston, plus “three classics from Bang on a Can history by Annie Gosfield, Arnold Dreyblatt and Glenn Branca, with a rare performance of Branca’s massive “three dimensional” Movement Within, written specifically for the Bang on a Can All-Stars, in his unique tuning system and on his own original instruments” at Merkin Concert Hall, $25

3/7, 7 PM Zikrayat play slinky, cinematic classics from the golden age of Arabic song at Drom, $15

3/7, 7:30 PM a killer twinbill with two of the best, most unselfconsciously poignant solo string composer-performers out there: violinist/percussionist Christopher Tignor and Julia Kent playing the album release show for her new one at National Sawdust, $22 adv tix rec

3/7, 8 PM ferocious, female-fronted Afrobeat band Underground System followed by wild Palestinian hip-hop/dancehall reggae/habibi pop band 47soulat Bric Arts, $15 adv tix rec. Underground System are also at C’Mon Everybody on 3/22 at 11 for five bucks less.

3/7, time tba (guessing 9ish) the L Train Brass Band (who won’t be able to get home after the show, presumably), Dingonek Street Band playing second line, Afrobeat, Ethio-jazz, and Brooklyn’s original punk Balkan horn group Hungry March Band at Pine Box Rock Shop

3/8, 7:30 PM violinist Stanichka Dimitrova and the PhiloSonia ensemble explore the concept of sturm und drang in works by Schubert, Wolf and Brahms, woo hoo, at the Old Stone House in Park Slope, $25/$10 stud/srs

3/9, 6 PM haunting, magical Middle Eastern classical singer Shelley Thomas and her band followed at 8 by art-song luminary Karen Mantler and at 10 by Rana Santacruz – the Mexican Shane MacGowan, but without the booze if you can imagine that – at Barbes

3/9, 7:30 PM brilliant tabla player/composer and Brooklyn Raga Massive anchor Sameer Gupta does double duty, first in a trio set with sarangi player Rohan Misra and then with sitarist Rishab Sharma at the Chhandayan Center For Indian Music, $20

3/9, 8 PM one of the year’s best twinbills: brilliant, soaring south Indian chanteuse Falu and her orchestra and hypnotic, pulsing, sousaphone-driven Guadalupian/New Orleans band Delgres a at Flushing Town Hall, $16

3/10, 2 PM Eleonor Bindman and Susan Sobolewski of Duo Vivace play a family-friendly concert including Bernstein’s Overture from Candide and Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals at the Old Stone House in Park Slope, $20 adults/$10 kids

3/10, 3 PM violist Elise Frawley leads an ensemble playing a program tba at the 92nd St.Y, free

3/16, 2 PM two of the world’s most lyrical, captivating Indian carnatic violinists, Trina Basu and Anjna Swaminathan “engage together in an improvisational dialogue with an art piece of their choice during a special museum “Art & Music” tour” at the Rubin Museum of Art

3/17, 3 PM Benjamin Larsen, cello and Hyungjin Choi, piano​ play works by Grieg, Schumann and Robert Sirota at Concerts on the Slope, St. John’s Episcopal Church, 139 St. John’s Place downhill from 7th Ave, sugg don

3/17, 3 PM the North/South Chamber Orchestra celebrate St Patrick’s Day with the premiere of a clarinet concerto by Irish composer Frank Corcoran. Also on the program :works by David Froom, John David Little and Heather Savage. Clarinetist Sammy Lesnick and flutist Lisa Hansen are the soloists at Christ & St. Stephen’s Church, 120 W 69th St,free

3/19, 7:30 PM percussionist Alessandra Belloni‘s rustically witchy tarantella band plays the release show for her joint book/cd project Healing Journeys of the Black Madonna at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, 1047 Amsterdam Ave, $25

3/20, midnight boisterously funny oldschool 60s C&W and brooding southwestern gothic with the Jack Grace Band at the Ear Inn

3/21, 7 PM the harrowing, immigration-themed multimedia performance Ask Hafiz – the story of Sahar Muradi’s tumultuous journey from a Soviet-ruled Afghanistan to Queens. “Along the way, Sahar, following an age-old practice, asks questions to the book of poetry by Hafiz. The answers are revealed through songs composed and sung by Haleh Liza, dance choreographed and performed by Malini Srinivasan, with music by Adam Maalouf, Trina Basu, Bala Skandan and Rich Stein, at Joe’s Pub

3/21, 7:30 PM the deservedly acclaimed Brooklyn Youth Chorus sing new work by Owen Pallett, joined by Alev Lenz for a set of her songs followed by by similarly lush, enigmatic art-rock/parlor pop band Wye Oak at Merkin Concert Hall, $25

3/21, 8 PM saxophonist María Grand’s “Music As a User’s Manual” which “Invites the audience to use it as a manual – the manual will offer several things that can be done: scream; meditate; and others” at Roulette, $18 adv tix rec

3/23, 2 PM the Orchestra of St Luke’s play a composer portrait of Gabriela Lena Frank at Flushing Town Halll, free w/rsvp. The program repeats on 3/24 at 2 PM at Restoration Plaza, 1368 Fulton St. in Bed-Stuy; 3/28 at 7 at the Hostos Center, 450 Grand Concourse in the Bronx, and 4/4 at 6 at the Harlem School for the Arts, 645 St Nicholas Ave

3/27, 6 PM a good tunesmith twinbill: cleverly lyrical, edgily funny, soaring-voiced powerpop/acoustic rock singer Tamara Hey followed by the much darker, more eclectic darkly eclectic, enigmatic Lorraine Leckie at the small room at the Rockwood

3/29, 7 PM genre-smashing avant-jazz saxophonist/singer Stephanie Chou and her band play her harrowing jazz suite Comfort Girl, about women forced into sexual slavery under the Japanese in WWII at Joe’s Pub, $15

3/29. 7 PM the Latin American Chamber Players perform works by Ravel, Boulanger, Francaix, Roussel and Poulenc at Scholes St. Studios, $20

3/29, 7 PM pianist Conor Hanick and Parallax Ensemble play works by Kati Agócs, Balázs Futó, Nicolas Namoradze; Robert Beaser and Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade; and the U.S. premiere of Petrichor, a violin-piano duet based on J.S. Bach by Jocelyn Morlock at 1 Rivington St. upstairs, $15/$10 stud/srs

3/29,7 PM not a music event but of interest: “The Last Days of Judas Iscariot is a hilarious, poignant, thought-provoking work by Pulitzer-prize winning playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis. Boasting a large, zany cast of characters, the play asks one of the most plaguing questions in the Christian ideology: What happened to Judas Iscariot? The story is that Judas was the disciple of Jesus who betrayed his friend and teacher to the authorities. He is seen as the man responsible for Jesus’s death; afterwards, Judas fell into despair and hung himself from an olive tree; since then, he has been suffering for his deeds deep in Hell, and will continue to do so for all eternity. Is that really fair? Was Judas the duplicitous master of his own fate, a much-suffering pawn used for Jesus’s ends, or just a man who made a mistake? Set in a courtroom in Purgatory, The Last Days puts Judas’ case to a hilarious, riotous, piercing trial, the results of which are sure to make the inhabitants of Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory -mand the audience — reconsider.” At St. George’s Episcopal Church, 7 Rutherford Pl, free, RSVP required

3/30, 8 PM composers and instrumentalists Daniel Fishkin, Cleek Schrey, and Ron Shalom — the U.S.’s only extant daxophone consort – at Issue Project Room, $15/$12 stud/srs “The daxophone is a thin wooden strip played with a bow, created by the German improviser/inventor Hans Reichel in 1987. The instrument’s sound, somewhere between a cello and badger, ranges from furtive gurgles and delicate whistles to wild screams.”

4/4, 7:30 PM, repeating 4/5 at 8 PM and 4/6 at 2 and 8 PM the NY Philharmonic play works by Beethoven, Bernstein, Stucky ,Wagner and very young composers at Avery Fisher Hall, $5 tix available to NYPD, NYFD, EMT, and NYC city service professionals.

4/6. 7:30 PM a tribute to jazz and latin flute legend Dave Valentin, featuring a quintet led by his musical director, pianist Bill O’Connell, with flutist Andrea Brachfeld in the Valentin role, followed by the debut of O’Connell’s new project A.C.E. (Afro-Caribbean Ensemble) featuring a nonet at the Hostos Community College auditorium, 450 Grand Concourse in the Bronx, $20//$5 stud

4/7, 5 PM the Kandinsky Trio perform a lyrical early Beethoven piano trio and then will be joined by clarinetist Jose Garcia Taborda and narrator Patricia Raun for Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time at the Lounge at Hudson View Gardens, 128 Pinehurst Ave @ W 183rd St, A train or #1 train (to 181st St) or the M4 bus (to 183rd St), $15/$12 stud/srs

4/9, 7 PM a first-class indie classical ensemble fronted by singer Eliza Bagg with Daniel Schlosberg, Maya Bennardo, Hannah Levinson, Hannah Collins, and Mike Compitello perform the album release show for Alex Weiser’s new album All the Days Were Purple – putting a new spin on ancient Jewish musical traditions – at the Yivo Institute, 15 W 16th St., free, reception to follow

This past evening a sold-out crowd at the Jewish Museum witnessed what could have been a once-in-a-lifetime event: the first-ever live performance of the Julia Wolfe string quartet cycle on a single bill. On one hand, it’s kind of a shock that it took the composer’s own organization, Bang on a Can, to stage it. Sure, Wolfe’s string quartets are taxing to play, but so are Bartok’s, and hundreds of groups play the Bartok cycle. And Wolfe’s profile has never been higher: it’s hard to remember the last time the New York Philharmonic built a weekend around a work by another living composer, as they did with her epic cantata Fire in My Mouth back in January.

Assuming she writes another string quartet or two – hardly out of the question – putting five or more on a single program would be next to impossible, which would make this night even more historic. Wolfe was in the front row and revealed how she’d been moved to tears by Ethel’s performance of the most recent work on the bill, Blue Dress for String Quartet, so it made sense to give them the herculean task of playing all four this time. And the group captured lightning in a bottle.

It took immense stamina and persistence to get it all in there. All four of the works employ long, slowly mutating, sometimes utterly hypnotic passages of emphatic, insistent quarter notes (and often considerably faster volleys as well). Over the course of almost two hours onstage, violist Ralph Farris, cellist Dorothy Lawson, violinists Corin Lee and Kate Dreyfuss (the latter subbing for Kip Jones) didn’t miss a beat, no small achievement.

They began with Blue Dress, which, like so much of Wolfe’s work, draws on Americana, in this case the old folk song Little Girl with a Blue Dress On. Wolfe cautioned the crowd that this particular girl is fierce. Echoes of Philip Glass and Louis Andriessen blended into a twisted quasi-Appalachian sound world with relentless intensity and sarcasm that bordered on savagery, as the old folk tune filtered in and out of the picture. There was some wry clog-dancing and singing too. Little Girl? As if! This may have been state-of-the-art, end-of-the-decade serious concert music, but the ethos was vintage punk rock.

The other string quartets dated from the 90s. Dig Deep, Wolfe explained, was all about searching, written at a time when she felt “crazy” because she was having trouble trying to conceive. The ensemble worked the contrasts between wisps of hope and crushing reality with a knowing soberness grounded by Lawson’s pitchblende cello resonance. Lee got to give the music a breather with a Vivaldi-esque passage; Farris delivered the ending with cold matter-of-factness.

Four Marys, Wolfe said, was inspired by a Jean Ritchie murder ballad as much as by the “crude, crying sound” of the only stringed instrument she plays, the mountain dulcimer. Creeping up and around a central note, sometimes with slow, lingering glissandos, the ensemble maintained a lush intensity.

They closed with Early That Summer, the one piece that most closely foreshadowed Wolfe’s harrowing Cruel Sister string piece from 2012. She’d written this one in Amsterdam after reading Kai Bird’s The Chairman: John J. McCloy and the Making of the American Establishment, a prophetic book to encounter in the era of GATT, NAFTA and corporate sovereignty over democratically elected governments. Wispy microtones and slow upward trajectories built white-knuckle suspense, a relentlessly troubled mood amidst the calm, Lawson’s cello a stygian river of sound.

The monthly Bang on a Can concert series at the Jewish Museum continues on May 23 at 8 PM with avant garde vocal icon Meredith Monk and two members of her Vocal Ensemble, Katie Geissinger and Allison Sniffin; tix are $20/$16 stud/srs and are still available as of today but probably won’t be much longer. Ethel’s next gig is March 16 starting around 5 PM at the balcony bar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the performance is free with museum admission.

The cover illustration for trumpeter Steph Richards’ solo album Fullmoon (streaming at Bandcamp) shows an open palm holding what could be a postcard of the moon – a pretty warped moon, anyway. But when you click on the individual tracks to play them (on devices that play mp3s, anyway), it turns out that’s a phone the hand is holding, and you’re taking a selfie. Truth in advertising: Richards’ music is deviously fun. She’s bringing her horn and her pedal to a show at the Owl on March 2 at 9 PM; ten bucks in the tip bucket helps ensure she’ll make more appearances at that welcoming, well-appointed listening room.

The album’s opening track, New Moon is based around a catchy, repetitive two-note riff, spiced with gamelanesque electronic flickers via Dino J.A. Deane’s sampler, with unexpected squall at the end. The second number, Snare develops from a thicket of echo effects, insectile sounds and breathy bursts, to a wry evocation of a snare drum. Then, with Piano, Richards moves from desolate, echoey, minimalist phrases to wryly cheery upward swipes: the title doesn’t seem to have anything to do with either the instrument or the dynamic.

The coy humor of the atmospheric miniature Half Moon introduces the album’s first diptych, Gong, which develops into a querulous little march, then a weird kaleidoscope of polyrhythms. Timpani doesn’t sound anything like kettledrums; instead, it’s a funny bovine conversation that all of a sudden grows sinister – although the ending is ridiculously amusing. The album ends with the title track, Richards developing a complicated conversation out of late-night desolation in the first part, then a barnyard of the mind (or the valves). Her levity is contagious – and she’s capable of playing with a lot more savagery than she does here, something that wouldn’t be out of the question to expect Saturday night in Lefferts Gardens.

At his sold-out show last night to close a weekend of performances at the Abrons Arts Center, countertenor Ju-eh hit high notes that were as disconcerting as they were spectacular. It wasa profound and often profoundly funny display of awe-inspiring technique matched with witty banter and deep insight into the relationship between audience and performer. In an era where more and more, the act onstage becomes a mere backdrop for social media posturing by wannabes in the crowd, Ju-eh’s generous interaction with the audience had unusual resonance.

He made his entrance from the side of the stage with a soaring aria by Handel over a solo organ recording. Seated centerstage, his verbal sparring partner Hwarg worked a series of mixers and laptop. Although Ju-eh was wearing a skirt, he revealed in a lengthy Q&A after the show that he didn’t choose that to be genderqueer: rather, it was a historical reference to an era when pretty much everyone wore the same robe, or the same daishiki. The rest of the outfit – plain white shirt and blue thermal socks, his hair knotted with a stick – mirrored his background as a Chinese-born New York avant garde artist who’s built a career singing western opera.

He and his collaborator call this piece Living Dying Opera: he lives to sing it, but it’s also killing him sometimes. Self-doubt quickly became a persistent theme, most poignantly portrayed via a plaintive John Dowland version of an old English air. Ju-eh’s voice reached for the rafters with an imploring wail as he crouched in the corner in the darkness, holding a simple lamp, Diogenes-style. On one hand, it’s reassuring to know that someone with such prodigious talent can also be self-critical; on the other, if this guy isn’t satisfied with his achievements, how about us mere mortals?

After the show, he explained that he always wants audiences at his performances to feel loved. That assessment in many respects makes a lot of sense, in that a lot of people go to a performance to transcend, to see themselves in the music or the narrative and come out on the other side to a better place. What he didn’t address is that audiences all too often have other, similarly self-involved reasons for going out. Whether watching something on Facebook Live and texting all your ‘friends” about it confers the same status as taking a selfie at the actual show, with the performer somewhere in the background, is open to debate.

But even with all that talent and that resume, Ju-eh remains a fish out of water, even in the rarefied world of countertenors. He explained that most operatic roles written for men singing in a soprano’s range are antagonists: they’re supposed to sound evil. Ju-eh’s voice, and his style, don’t fit that mold: they’re especially robust, an endless, thick rope ladder reaching into the clouds, with a muscular vibrato to match. Although he’s working in a range usually limited to women, he doesn’t hear his own voice as female, and he shouldn’t: it’s uniquely his.

There were a lot of very amusing, sometimes coy, sometimes disarmingly down-to-earth extemporaneous moments where he and Hwarg discussed how well, or not so well, the show was progressing. There were also points where he took crowd members and put them centerstage, then continued singing from their seats. The most haunting of those moments was when he delivered a stark, aching verse and chorus of Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child from the front row.

The after-show Q&A kept the audience as engaged as the performance itself did. The funniest revelation was that Ju-eh had come up with a brief interlude where he lay on the floor in order to give himself a breather rather than to add any kind of meaning. The man he’d pulled from the crowd to stand onstage – as “Mr. Mango” – confided that he’d encouraged Ju-eh to pick him because he wanted to find out if the other audience members had also been chosen randomly, or if they were shills. Over and over again, Ju-eh’s most existential questions of identity resonated more profoundly than anything else in this provocative encounter sponsored by the New York Chinese Culture Salon.

Violist Jessica Pavone has been one of the most consistently interesting and compelling musicians on the New York improvisational scene for the better part of a decade, someone who always seems to elevate other players to new levels of spontaneity. Everybody wants to work with her: trumpet icon Wadada Leo Smith, haunting psychedelic art-rocker Rose Thomas Bannister and the late, great guitar stormscaper Glenn Branca number among her many collaborators. Her broodingly surreal 2012 song cycle Hope Dawson Is Missing is a genuine classic, and her Dark Tips project with another hauntingly chameleonic multi-instrumentalist, Raquel Bell is magically murky. Pavone’s latest solo release, In the Action is streaming at Bandcamp. She’s playing on a killer twinbill on Feb 20 at 8 PM at Happy Lucky No. 1 Gallery, followed at around 9 by charismatic accordionist/multi-instrumentalist songwriter Rachelle Garniez, who’s playing with another first-rate violist, Karen Waltuch. The cover charge is a mystery right now; ten bucks would be a fair guess.

Pavone is not typically a showy player, preferring purpose, melody and texture. Muted, rhythmic white noise flickers behind uneasy, slowly resolving, multitracked close harmonies as the album’s first track, Oscillatory Salt Transport gets underway. Pavone wails on a pedal note when she’s not working twisted permutations on what could be the intro to a Scottish air.

With tons of reverb echoing from her spare, plucked phrases and overtones burning from her low strings, 2 and Maybe in the End could be a deconstructed 80s spacerock anthem at quarterspeed. Using her trusty loop pedal, Pavone builds vortical variations from a chugging diesel engine idle in Look Out Look Out Look Out: these stygian sounds hardly bring to mind the typical range of a viola. She turns the pedal off to begin the album’s concluding title cut, digging into her axe’s natural low registers in a return to allusions to British Isles folk, teasing the listener with that insistent opening cadenza up to a wry, completely unexpected false ending. As is typical of Pavone’s work, it has the freshness of having been made up on the spot even though a lot of it was probably planned out in advance.

Daily updates – if you go out a lot, you might want to bookmark this page and check back regularly. If you’re leaving your hood, make sure you check http://www.mta.info for service changes considering how the trains are at night and on the weekend.

If you don’t recognize a venue where a particular act is playing, check the comprehensive, recently updated list of over 200 New York City music venues at New York Music Daily’s sister blog Lucid Culture.

This is not a list of every show in town – it’s a carefully handpicked selection. If this calendar seems short on praise for bands and artists, it’s because every act here is recommended if you like their particular kind of music. Many different styles to choose from.

Showtimes listed here are set times, not the time doors open – if a listing says something like “9ish,” that means it’ll probably start later than advertised. If you see a show listed without the start time, that’s because either the artist, their publicist or the venue in question sent incomplete info – those acts are usually listed last on a particular date. Always best to check with the venue for the latest information on set times and door charges, since that information is often published here weeks in advance. Weekly events first followed by the daily calendar.

If you see a typo or an extra comma or something like that, remember that while you were out seeing that great free concert that you found out about here, somebody was up late after a long day of work editing and adding listings to this calendar ;)

On select Wednesdays and Sundays, an intimate, growing piano music salon on the Upper West Side featuring iconoclastically insightful, lyrical pianist Nancy Garniez – a cult favorite with an extraordinarily fluid, singing, legato style – exploring the delicious minutiae of works from across the centuries, beverages and lively conversation included! email for details/address

Mondays at 7 PM multi-instrumentalist Dennis Lichtman’s popular western swing band Brain Cloud at Barbes followed at 9:30 PM by a variety of south-of-the-border-style bands playing cumbias, boogaloo, salsa, maybe all of the above.

Mondays in February at 10 PM Melissa Gordon of Melissa & the Mannequins at LIC Bar. One of the best purist janglerock songwriters in NYC works up new material – should be a clinic in good tunesmithing

Mondays at the Jazz Standard it’s all Mingus, whether with the Mingus Orchestra, Big Band or Mingus Dynasty: as jazz goes, it’s arguably the most exhilarating show of the week, every week. The first-rate players always rise to the level of the material. Sets 7:30/9:30 PM, $25 and worth it.

Also Monday and Tuesday nights Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks, a boisterous horn-driven 11-piece 1920s/early 30’s band play Iguana, 240 W. 54th St ( Broadway/8th Ave) , 3 sets from 8 to 11, surprisingly cheap $15 cover plus $15 minimum considering what you’re getting. Even before the Flying Neutrinos or the Moonlighters, multi-instrumentalist Giordano was pioneering the oldtimey sound in New York; his long-running residency at the old Cajun on lower 8th Ave. is legendary. He also gets a ton of film work (Giordano wrote the satirical number that Willie Nelson famously sang in Wag the Dog).

Mondays in February, Rev. Vince Anderson and his band play Union Pool in Williamsburg, two sets starting at 10:30 PM. The Rev. is one of the great keyboardists around, equally thrilling on organ or electric piano, an expert at Billy Preston style funk, honkytonk, gospel and blues. He writes very funny, very politically astute, sexy original songs and is one of the most charismatic, intense live performers of our time. It’s a crazy dance party. Paula Henderson from Burnt Sugar is the lead soloist on baritone sax, with frequent special guests.

Tuesdays in February, clever, fiery, eclectic ten-piece Balkan/hip-hop/funk brass maniacs Slavic Soul Party at 9 PM at Barbes (check the club calendar). Get there as soon as you can as they’re very popular. $10 cover.

Thursdays at 8:30 in February, the Brooklyn Raga Massive – a rotating cast of A-list Indian, jazz and rock musicians who love to jam out classic Indian themes from over the centuries to the present day – play the Jalopy, $15 adv tix at the bar at the main space. Tons of special guests followed by a wild raga jam!

Fridays and Saturdays at 5 PM adventurous indie classical string quartet Ethel plus frequent special guests playing a mix of classical and more contemporary material at the balcony bar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, free w/museum adm

Fridays in February and March, 6 PM charmingly inscrutable Parisienne jazz chanteuse Chloe & the French Heart Jazz Band at Club Bonafide, $20. They’re also there on 2/24 at 5:30 PM

Fridays at 7:30 PM tenor saxophonist Ken Fowser leads his band at the Django. Jukebox jazz in a JD Allen vein but not as dark and more straight-ahead/groove-oriented: as postbop party music goes, nobody’s writing better than this guy right now.

Free classical concerts on Saturdays at 4 PM in February as well as

March 23 and 30, returning to weekly Saturdays in April at Bargemusic; usually solo piano or small chamber ensembles. If you get lucky, you’ll catch pyrotechnic violinist/music director Mark Peskanov and/or the many members of his circle. Early arrival advised.

Most Sundays at 5:15 PM, a free recital on the amazing, powerful, dynamic new organ at St. Thomas Church at 5th Ave and 53rd St. featuring some of the world’s greatest organists. The space is magnificent and the music usually is too. Right now the church fathers are programming pretty much everybody who used to work here and play the mighty old Aeolian-Skinner organ that finally had to be replaced. Check the concert calendar for details.

2/2, 7:30 PM the NJ Symphony Orchestra play a Chinese New Year celebration at NJPAC in Newark with Beethoven’s Festival Overture, works by Tan Dun and Li Huanzhi and others, $20 tix avail

2/2, 8 PM left coast postbop pianist Richard Sears with his trio followed by torchy singer Jennifer Charles’ and guitar mastermind Oren Bloedow’s haunting, fearlessly political art-rock/noir band Elysian Fields on their home turf at the Owl, $10

2/2, Unsteady Freddie‘s monthly surf rock extravaganza at Otto’s begins at 9 PM with Brooklyn cover trio the Band of Others, Link Wray cover band the Wraycyclers at 10, the Superbness (let’s hope they have it) at 11 and at midnight wickedly jangly surf/twang/country instrumentalists the Bakersfield Breakers

2/7-8, 7 PM “Spanish guitarist and composer Oscar Peñas and his Jazz Quartet combine with the Mivos Quartet to create a classical-jazz suite inspired by the 3,000-year-old Andalusian fishing tradition known as the almadraba” at Aaron Davis Hall, $20/$10 stud/srs

2/7, 7:30 PM pianistMackenzie Melemed plays a program tba at Greenwich House Music School, free

2/7, 8 PM boisterously funny oldschool 60s C&W and brooding southwestern gothic with the Jack Grace Band at Hank’s, $10. They’re at Bar Chord on 2/23 at 9 for free.

2/7-9 and 2/13-16, 8 PM Robert Ashley’s opera Improvement (Don Leaves Linda): “follows the adventures of its protagonist Linda, whose travels and romances can be read as attempts at assimilation and cultural cross-pollination, with varying degrees of success and rejection. The metaphor stretches in time from 1492—the beginning of a European consciousness of America and the expulsion of the Sephardic Jews from Spain—to the late 1940s on the West Coast (representing the future of the USA). Densely layered streams of text, lush live vocals, and a minutely structured electronic orchestra combine to present a portrait of the American psyche” at the Kitchen, $25

2/8, 8 PM busker legends the Xylopholks in their furry suits followed by horn band Quatre Vingt Neuf (French for 89, a revolutionary date in case you missed it) playing Little Rascals theme music at Barbes

2/8, 8 PM the Dead Jetsetters – who do a decent late 60s MC5 impersonation – at Arlene’s, $10

2/9, 2 PM soul/funk trumpeter Lee Hogans and his Quintet at Harlem School for the Arts, 645 St. Nicholas Ave at 141st St., free

2/9, 4 PM the Erik Satie Quartet – Ron Hay (trombone), Max Seigel (bass trombone), Ben Holmes (trumpet), and Andrew Hadro (bari sax) –reinvent classic and obscure Satie chamber pieces as well as rare compositions by his obscure contemporaries, followed at 6 by low register reedman Josh Sinton’s Phantasos playing Morphine covers, at 8 by intense, lyrical jazz bassist/composer Pedro Giraudo leading his Tango Quartet and at at 10 by Rana Santacruz – the Mexican Shane MacGowan, but without the booze if you can imagine that – at Barbes

2/9, 7:30 PM sitarist Kinnar Seen with tabla player Samir Chatterjee at the Chhandayan Center For Indian Music, $20

2/12, drinks at 5:30 PM, show at 6 the Mivos Quartet & guitarist Nadav Lev play new music by Murail, Abbasi and Klartag at the Miller Theatre, free

2/12, 7 PM a major moment in New York music historiography:“Roulette is unveiling its historic archive of nearly 4,000 concerts dating back to its first concert in 1978. Today this includes hundreds of audio and video recordings, photos, notes, programs, posters, and ephemera collected, restored, and preserved, with thousands more items to come.” Literally everyone who was anybody in the downtown scene back in the day played Roulette – and a lot still do. Free.

2/12,7:30 PM new music for voice and organ by Kevin McCarter; Jinhee Han; David Picton; Eugene Marlow; Frank Retzel; Roger Blanc; Richard Brooks and Raoul Pleskow featuring Bill Gross, baritone, with Claudia Dumschat in the console at the Church of the Transfiguration, 1 E 29th St. $20

2/13, 7 PM the legendary klezmer duo of Andy Statman (clarinet/mandolin) and Walter Zev Feldman (tsimbl/hammered dulcimer) for the first time in 35 years at the Center for Jewish History, 15 W 16th St, $15/$10 stud

2/14, 11 PM wryly psychedelic cinematic Italophile instrumentalists/parodists Tredici Bacci play the album release show for their new one at the Mercury, $12 grn adm

2/14. midnight rustic Colombian sounds with the Cumbia River Band at the small room at the Rockwood

2/15, 7 PM irrepressible bassist Moppa Elliott does triple duty: with Advancing on a Wild Pitch, then with the large improvisational ensemble Acceleration Due to Gravity and finally his Unspeakable Garbage, apparent heirs to the Mostly Other People Do the Killing satire-jazz throne at Shapeshifter Lab, $10

2/16, 8 PM charismatic, politically fearless, historically-inspired oldtime country blues duo Piedmont Bluz and bluegrass band Cole Quest & the City Pickers at the People’s Voice Cafe, sugg don, $20, “more if you choose; less if you can’t; no one turned away”

2/20, 8 PM acerbic indie classical duo String Noise play “very quiet music written for two violins” by Catherine Lamb,Jurg Frey andLou Bunk at Arete Gallery, $20. They’re back here on 2/21 playing the album release show for their new one, $25 includes free prosecco

2/22, 7:30 PM the MSM Orchestra play Respighi’s The Pines of Rome plus works by Liszt and Arurtuinian at Neidorff-Karpati Hall at Manhattan School of Music, 130 Claremont Ave. (just north of W. 122nd St.), free, tix req

2/22, 7:30 PM legendary Black 47 leader and Irish punk songwriter Larry Kirwan and his allstar band play his new song cycle Ireland and America – A History in Song at the Schimmel Auditorium at Pace University, $30 tix avail

2/24, 3 PM violinist Suliman Tekalli leadsa trio playing works by Ives and Paolo Marchettini at Concerts on the Slope, St. John’s Episcopal Church, 139 St. John’s Place downhill from 7th Ave, Park Slope, any train to Grand Army Plz, sugg don

2/25, 7:30 PM Paul Chihara’s “Amatsu Kaze” for soprano, clarinet, flute, violin, cello, and piano: “Amatsu Kaze” is based on seven Haiku dealing with love, death and separation. The second half of the program features pianist Nadia Shpachenko-Gottesman performing music of Lewis Spratlan, Harold Meltzer, Hannah Lash, and James Matheson, at Symphony Space, $20

2/25, 8 PM Middle Eastern-tinged art-rock singer/pianist Brittany Anjou plays the album release show for her new one Enamiĝo Reciprokataj (Esperanto for “mutual breakdown”) with her trio at the Poisson Rouge, $10 adv tix rec.

2/26, 8 PM NY Polyphony sings a rare program of Alpine early music by Philippe Verdelot, Cipriano de Rore, plus works by Lassus, Clemens and Palestrina at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, 145 W 46th St,$30 tix avail

3/1 Ty Segall at Warsaw is sold out – but in that space unless he really turns down you’re not going to hear anything anyway…

3/1, 7 PM sax quartet Nois make their New York debut with three world premieres by New York based composers Nathan Hudson, Howie Kenty and Ed Rosenberg III, plus Gemma Peacocke’s ‘Dwalm’, ‘Thirteen Changes’ from Pauline Oliveros and Georg Friedrich Haas’ ‘Saxophonquartett’ at Arete Gallery, $15

3/2, 4 PM cinematic, psychedelic quirk-pop keyboardist Michael Hearst presents “Curious, Unusual and Extraordinary” songs from his many bands followed at 8 by haunting, charismatic oldtimey-style banjo player and corrosively political songwriter Curtis Eller’s American Circus at Barbes

3/2, 6 PM hauntingly torchy songwriter Daphne Lee Martin at the small room at the Rockwood. Next door at the big room jaunty female-fronted original retro rocksteady band the Big Takeover plays at 9 for $10

3/2, 6 PM atmospheric, cinematic drummer/composer Tim Kuhl and his group at Pete’s

3/3, 10 PM chanteuse/uke player Dahlia Dumont’s Blue Dahlia play edgy, smartly lyrically-fueled, jazz-infused tunes in English and French with classic chanson and Caribbean influences at Barbes. The following night, 3/4, 6 PM they’re at the small room at the Rockwood

3/5, 7 PM Venezuelan group El Tuyero Ilustrado – cuatro player Edward Ramírez and singer and percussionist, Rafa Pino – play their new take on traditionaljoropo tuyero sounds at the Americas Society, $20

3/5, 7 PM rising star trumpeter Adam O’Farrill “with his new nine-piece ensemble Bird Blown Out of Latitude, performing new music born from the disorientation of personal displacement.” trumpeter Aaron Burnett and the Big Machine follow with special guest, the pyrotechnic Peter Evans at National Sawdust, $25 adv tix rec

3/5-9, 8:30 PM postbop/improv jazz drum maven Ches Smith leads a series of ensembles at the Stone at the New School, $20. Many killer lineups: the best could be 3/8 with Kris Davis (piano), Marc Ribot (guitar), Leon Boykins, Devin Hoff (bass)

3/6, 7:30 PM avant-rock band Boio, the genre-obliterating Warp Trio, and Forward Music Project – Amanda Gookin’s multimedia project of solo cello works developed to empower women and girls – followed by Contemporaneous playing works by violet Barnum and Henry Threadgill – a homage to Butch Morris – at Roulette, $18 adv tix rec

3/6, 7:30 PM iconic art-rockers the Bang on a Can All-Stars play world premieres of indie classical/art-rock dance music by Nicole Lizée, Josué Collado Fregoso, Henry Threadgill, and Trevor Weston, plus “three classics from Bang on a Can history by Annie Gosfield, Arnold Dreyblatt and Glenn Branca, with a rare performance of Branca’s massive “three dimensional” Movement Within, written specifically for the Bang on a Can All-Stars, in his unique tuning system and on his own original instruments” at Merkin Concert Hall, $25

3/7, 7 PM Zikrayat play slinky, cinematic classics from the golden age of Arabic song at Drom, $15

3/7, 7:30 PM a killer twinbill with two of the best, most unselfconsciously poignant solo string composer-performers out there: violinist/percussionist Christopher Tignor and Julia Kent playing the album release show for her new one at National Sawdust, $22 adv tix rec

3/7, 8 PM ferocious, female-fronted Afrobeat band Underground System followed by wild Palestinian hip-hop/dancehall reggae/habibi pop band 47soul at Bric Arts, $15 adv tix rec. Underground System are also at C’Mon Everybody on 3/22 at 11 for five bucks less.

3/8, 7:30 PM violinist Stanichka Dimitrova and the PhiloSonia ensemble explore the concept of sturm und drang in works by Schubert, Wolf and Brahms, woo hoo, at the Old Stone House in Park Slope, $25/$10 stud/srs

3/9, 7:30 PM brilliant tabla player/composer and Brooklyn Raga Massive anchor Sameer Gupta does double duty, first in a trio set with sarangi player Rohan Misra and then with sitarist Rishab Sharma at the Chhandayan Center For Indian Music, $20

3/9, 8 PM one of the year’s best twinbills: brilliant, soaring south Indian chanteuse Falu and her orchestra and hypnotic, pulsing, sousaphone-driven Guadalupian/New Orleans band Delgres a at Flushing Town Hall, $16

3/10, 2 PM Eleonor Bindman and Susan Sobolewski of Duo Vivace play a family-friendly concert including Bernstein’s Overture from Candide and Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals at the Old Stone House in Park Slope, $20 adults/$10 kids

3/10, 3 PM violist Elise Frawley leads an ensemble playing a program tba at the 92nd St.Y, free

3/16, 2 PM two of the world’s most lyrical, captivating Indian carnatic violinists, Trina Basu and Anjna Swaminathan “engage together in an improvisational dialogue with an art piece of their choice during a special museum “Art & Music” tour” at the Rubin Museum of Art

3/17, 3 PM Benjamin Larsen, cello and Hyungjin Choi, piano​ play works by Grieg, Schumann and Robert Sirota at Concerts on the Slope, St. John’s Episcopal Church, 139 St. John’s Place downhill from 7th Ave, sugg don

3/21, 7 PM the harrowing, immigration-themed multimedia performance Ask Hafiz – the story of Sahar Muradi’s tumultuous journey from a Soviet-ruled Afghanistan to Queens. “Along the way, Sahar, following an age-old practice, asks questions to the book of poetry by Hafiz. The answers are revealed through songs composed and sung by Haleh Liza, dance choreographed and performed by Malini Srinivasan, with music by Adam Maalouf, Trina Basu, Bala Skandan and Rich Stein, at Joe’s Pub

3/21, 7:30 PM the deservedly acclaimed Brooklyn Youth Chorus sing new work by Owen Pallett, joined by Alev Lenz for a set of her songs followed by by similarly lush, enigmatic art-rock/parlor pop band Wye Oak at Merkin Concert Hall, $25

3/21, 8 PM saxophonist María Grand’s “Music As a User’s Manual” which “Invites the audience to use it as a manual – the manual will offer several things that can be done: scream; meditate; and others” at Roulette, $18 adv tix rec

3/29, 7 PM genre-smashing avant-jazz saxophonist/singer Stephanie Chou and her band play her harrowing jazz suite Comfort Girl, about women forced into sexual slavery under the Japanese in WWII at Joe’s Pub, $15

3/29. 7 PM the Latin American Chamber Players perform works by Ravel, Boulanger, Francaix, Roussel and Poulenc at Scholes St. Studios, $20

3/29, 7 PM pianist Conor Hanick and Parallax Ensemble play works by Kati Agócs, Balázs Futó, Nicolas Namoradze; Robert Beaser and Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade; and the U.S. premiere of Petrichor, a violin-piano duet based on J.S. Bach by Jocelyn Morlock at 1 Rivington St. upstairs, $15/$10 stud/srs

3/30. 8 PM composers and instrumentalists Daniel Fishkin, Cleek Schrey, and Ron Shalom — the U.S.’s only extant daxophone consort – at Issue Project Room, $15/$12 stud/srs “The daxophone is a thin wooden strip played with a bow, created by the German improviser/inventor Hans Reichel in 1987. The instrument’s sound, somewhere between a cello and badger, ranges from furtive gurgles and delicate whistles to wild screams.”

3/30 catchy female-fronted powerpop band Big Eyes – who absolutely nail a late 70s/early 80s CBGB sensibility – play the album release show for their new one at Union Pool

4/4, 7:30 PM, repeating 4/5 at 8 PM and 4/6 at 2 and 8 PM the NY Philharmonic play works by Beethoven, Bernstein, Stucky ,Wagner and very young composers at Avery Fisher Hall, $5 tix available to NYPD, NYFD, EMT, and NYC city service professionals.

4/7, 5 PM the Kandinsky Trio perform a lyrical early Beethoven piano trio and then will be joined by clarinetist Jose Garcia Taborda and narrator Patricia Raun for Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time at the Lounge at Hudson View Gardens, 128 Pinehurst Ave @ W 183rd St, A train or #1 train (to 181st St) or the M4 bus (to 183rd St), $15/$12 stud/srs

As a saxophonist, Ingrid Laubrock has formidable chops, borderless ambitions and an often devious sense of humor. While she’s been increasingly sought after for prestige big band gigs in the last couple of years, her own compositions up til now have been mostly for small groups, heavy on the improvisation. This blog characterized her 2016 album Ubatuba as “free jazz noir.” Her latest release, Contemporary Chaos Practices – streaming at Bandcamp – is her most ambitious project to date: two lushly invigorating, Braxton-esque pieces for orchestra and soloists. Those looking for bouncy hooks and swing won’t find it here, but as far as grey-sky massed improvisation, vivid unease and wry humor are concerned, this album is hard to beat.

One big innovation here is that Laubrock employs two conductors. Eric Wubbels conducts the score, while the conduction of Taylor Ho Bynum guides the improvisational aspects of the performance. A big whoosh from the 42-piece orchestra kicks off guitarist Mary Halvorson’s insistent pointillisms as the first segment of the epic four-part title piece gets underway, quickly echoed by the full ensemble: the hammering effect is very Louis Andriessen. Echoey, after-the-battle desolation alternates with massive upward swells; hushed flickers interchange with assertive, massed staccato. From there, a big, portentous heroic theme gets devoured by a flitting swarm of instruments: the effect as funny as it is disconcerting.

The first two movements segue into each other; the third begins with Messiaenic birdsong-like figures, then Jacob Garchik’s trombone kicks off a deliciously off-center, frantic chase scene from the whole ensemble. Led by dissociative figures from the strings, the calm afterward foreshadows the eerie resonance of the coda, awash in enigmatic low brass while Kris Davis’ electric piano flickers and flutters like the celeste in a Bernard Herrmann horror film score.

The album’s second piece, Vogelfrei, begins lush and still, Davis’ muted, ghostly piano signaling a droll exchange between strings and low brass. The intricacy of the interplay, right down to the tongue-in-cheek whistling of the strings amid a slowly emerging, lustrous melody, may be more thoroughly composed than it seems. Comedic moments – Halvorson’s guitar detective hitting a brick wall and then collapsing, and a yes-we-can/no-you-can’t smackdown – liven an otherwise persistent disquiet. A sepulchral choir of voices enters as the instruments build to a crowded skatepark tableau, which disappears only to pop up again.

Davis’ brooding neoromantic figures echo over a distant whirl and bustle, followed by a couple of slow but vigorous upward crescendos. Moments of bittersweet melody fall away one after the other, fading down and out with a long shiver from the strings a la Julia Wolfe.

Laubrock’s New York home these days is the Jazz Gallery, although she also likes to explore the fringes, both literally and figuratively. Her next gig is on Jan 31 at Holo in Ridgewood with a like-minded cast of improvisers: guitarist Ava Mendoza, microtonal violinist Sarah Bernstein, bassists Adam Lane and Brandon Lopez, and drummer Vijay Anderson. It’s not clear who’s playing when or with whom, but the lineup is worth coming out for whatever the case might be. Showtime is 7 PM; cover is $15.

The new “luxury” Public Hotel at 215 Chrystie Street in Chinatown was constructed so cheaply that they didn’t even spend the two hundred bucks it would have cost them to put a sink in the men’s latrine.

The exit door swings open to the inside. There are also no paper towels.

Meaning that if you want to leave, you have to use your bare hand to yank something that many other dudes have yanked earlier in the evening, presumably with bare hands as well.

What relevance does this have to night two of the big marathon weekend of Winter Jazzfest 2019? You’ll have to get to the end of this page to find out.

For this blog, the big Saturday night of the increasingly stratified annual event began not in Chinatown but at the eastern edge of the Bleecker Street strip, which has traditionally traded in its cheesiness for a couple of nights of jazz bliss to accommodate the festival. Less so this year.

What’s the likelihood of seeing a band playing spaghetti western rock two nights in a row? It happened this weekend at Winter Jazzfest. Guitarist/singer Markus Nordenstreng, co-leader of the eclectic Tuomo & Markus took an early stab at defusing a potential minefield. “I know we’re pushing the limits of what you can do at a jazz festival. But we’re Finnish, so we don’t have to play by the rules,” he grinned. The group had just slunk their way through a triptych of slow, lurid, Lynchian soundtrack instrumentals in front of an aptly blue velvet backdrop. Trumpeter Verneri Pohjola took centerstage in a mashup of Angelo Badalamenti and late Bob Belden noir, with a couple of departures into Morricone-esque southwestern gothic. After that, Nordenstreng sang a new wave-flavored tribute to Helsinki pirate radio and then took a turn for the worse into Americana.

In past editions of the festival, the thrill of getting into a coveted set has too often been counterbalanced by the failure to do the same: a festival pass doesn’t guarantee admission, considering how small some of the clubs are. Down the block from Zinc Bar, it was heartwarming to see a long line hoping to get in to catch darkly tuneful pianist Guy Mintus with explosive singer Roopa Mahadevan. It was less heartwarming to have to go to plan B.

Which meant hunkering down and holding a seat for the better part of an hour waiting for Jen Shyu to take the stage at the rundown venerable cramped intimate Soho Playhouse. Shyu’s music inhabits a disquieting dreamworld of many Asian languages and musical idioms. She’s a talented dancer, a brilliantly diverse singer and composer. At this rare solo gig, she played more than competently on Taiwanese moon lute, Japanese biwa, Korean gayageum, American Rhodes piano and Korean soribuk drum, among other instruments.

Shyu’s themes are often harrowing and fiercely populist; this show was a chance to see how unselfconsciously and bittersweetly funny she can be, via a retelling of an ancient, scatological Taiwanese parable about the dangers of overreaching. “Cockfighting,” she mused. “You can laugh. It’s a funny word.” It got way, way funnier from there, but a dark undercurrent persisted, fueled by the devastating loss of a couple of Javanese friends in a brutal car crash in 2016.

Back at Subculture, it was just as redemptive to watch Dave Liebman challenge himself and push the envelope throughout a mystical, hypnotic trio set with percussionists Adam Rudolph and Hamid Drake. Liebman’s meticulous, judiciously slashing modal work on soprano sax was everything a packed, similarly veteran house could have wanted. His trilling wood flute, adventures plucking under the piano lid, and unexpectedly emphatic, kinetic tenor sax were more of a surprise from a guy who’s in many ways even more vital than he was forty years ago – and that says a lot. Rudolph wound up the set playing sintir – the magical Moroccan acoustic bass – and looping a catchy gnawa riff as Drake boomed out a hypnotic beat on daf frame drum.

Even better than two successive nights of spaghetti western music was two nights of Carmen Staaf compositions. The poignantly lyrical pianist shared the stage with the similar Ingrid Jensen on Friday night; last night, Staaf was with polymath drummer Allison Miller and their wryly titled Science Fair band with Dayna Stephens on tenor sax, Jason Palmer on trumpet and Matt Penman on bass. Staaf proved a perfect, hard-hitting rhythmic foil throughout Miller’s compositions, which are as restless as Miller’s drumming would have you believe. We’re not just taking A and B and C sections; we’re talking M and N and maybe more, considering how many fleeting ideas were flickering through her metrically glittering tunes. Palmer started out as bad hardbop cop but got lingeringly Romantic, fast; Stephens stayed in balmy mode, more or less. And Miller’s hyperkinetic, constantly counterintuitive accents added both mirth and mystery to Staaf’s methodically plaintive balladry, a richly bluesy Mary Lou Williams homage and a final, broodingly modal latin-tinged anthem.

That’s where the night ended for this blog; much as it could have been fun to watch tenor sax heavyweights JD Allen and David Murray duke it out, or to hear what kind of juju trumpeter Stephanie Richards could have conjured up alongside reedman Oscar Noriega, sometimes you have to watch your health instead.

Now about that bathroom and how that factors into this story. According to the printed festival schedule, there was a whole slate of hot swing jazz scheduled in a downstairs room – hidden behind an unmarked, locked doorway, as it turned out – at the “luxury” Public Hotel. According to a WJF staffer, a last-minute change of venue two train stations to the north was required when the hotel suddenly cancelled because someone had offered them more money to do a wedding there instead. The result was a lot of mass confusion.

And the Public Hotel staff did their best to keep everybody in the dark. None of the support people seemed to have been briefed that such a room existed, let alone that there was any such thing as Winter Jazzfest – notwithstanding that the hotel had been part of the festival less than 24 hours before. Those who knew that there actually was such a room gave out conflicting directions: no surprise, since it’s tucked away in an alcove with no signage.

It is pathetic how many people will not only kiss up to those they view as bosses, but also emulate their most repulsive characteristics. Cornered by a posse of a half dozen of us, the Public Hotel’s front desk people on the second floor wouldn’t make eye contact. Despite repeated entreaties, they pretended we didn’t exist. Entitlement spreads like herpes.

A floor below, the bar manager couldn’t get his story straight. First, there was no way to the downstairs room other than through the locked outside door. Then, woops, it turned out that there was an elevator, but that we weren’t “allowed to use it.” Likewise, he told us that the venue – whose website didn’t list the night – also didn’t have a number we could call for information.

“A Manhattan music venue without a phone, that’s a first,” a veteran in our posse sneered.

The simpering manager finally copped to the fact that there was in fact a phone, “But it’s private.” Would he call it, or get one of his staff to call it for us and find out what the deal was? No.

“The hotel and the venue are separate places,” he confided – and then enumerated the many types of information the two share. What he didn’t share was what would have sent us on our way. And maybe he didn’t have the answer. What was clear was how much he wanted us to abandon our search, and stay and pay for drinks amidst the Eurotrash.

One tireless member of our posse went down into the basement and opened one of many, many doors marked “private.” Behind it was the kitchen. One of the cooks, a personable individual eating a simple plate of what appeared to be Rice-a-Roni, volunteered to help. First, the cook suggested we go up to the front desk and ask. After hearing how all we were getting was the runaround, the cook was still down for finding an answer: “Let me just finish this and I’ll come up with you.”

As welcome as the offer was, one doesn’t drag people away from their dinner…or into a fiasco that clearly was not going to be resolved. But it was reassuring to know that in the belly of the beast, surrounded by Trumpie Wall Street trash and their enablers who mistakenly think they can get ahead by aping them, that good people still exist.

One of the most subtly magical atmospheric albums released in recent months is John McCowen’s Solo Contra album, streaming at Bandcamp. It’s a trio of solo compositions for contrabass clarinet. McCowen is a protege of Roscoe Mitchell and has a background in punk jazz; this album brings to mind the former if not the latter. Lesley Flanigan’s experiments with speakers and audio feedback are another strong point of comparison. McCowen’s formula seems simple but is actually very technically daunting: to employ this relatively rare, low-pitched instrument to produce surrealistically oscillating, keening high textures via tireless circular breathing.

Gritty, simmering ambience rises out of a mist as the first track, Fur Korv gets underway. Valves pop delicately in the room’s tantalizing natural reverb; high harmonics build slowly and disappear in a second.

It’s amazing how many of those harmonics McCowen is able to simultaneously tease out of the horn in the second number, Chopper HD, a study in burred high frequencies. Much as the sonics often evoke a circular saw, or a loose fanwheel that could use some grease, it doesn’t appear that McCowen uses any electronic effects to make his job easier.

McCowen’s magnum opus here is the practically seventeen-minute suite Berths 1-3. Digeridoo-like spirals contrast with barely audible, breathy white noise; as the pitches grow higher and more acidically scratchy, it’s a clinic in rattle and hum, a treble counterpart to the diesel-beyond-the-bulkhead ambience of Gebhard Ullmann’s BassX3 project. This isn’t music that will hit you over the head, but you can get completely lost in it.